- [Mike] We are Sorted. A group of mates who have your back when it comes to all things food. From cooking battles to gadget reviews. - Ben, it's not worth it! - [Mike] And cookbook challenges to a midweek meal Packs app. - [Jamie] Crack your eggs, bake. - [Mike] We uncover the
tools that'll help us all cook and eat smarter. Join our community, where
everything we do starts with you. (upbeat music) - Now, you guys know that
we love to put new food innovations to the test
here in our kitchen. Today, no different. Typically, I might find them
as I travel or go to expos and more importantly from your comments, but today, all the
products we're looking at have come from one event that
I was invited to speak at a couple of weeks ago. Basically an event that
showcases incredible, young entrepreneurial minds
who are doing incredible things around the sustainable future for food. It interested my geeky mind,
so I thought I'd bring them here to see what James, our
chef, and Barry, our normal, have to say about them. - Why don't I get invited
to talk at events? (laughs) Please, lift the cloche. (gasp) - Now you know how this format is. - [James] It's gonna be one of those. - Lots of strange things in bowls. - Is it strange though? That is rice. They are rice grains. Grains of rice.
- Shall I tell him what it is or-? - What are you talking about? - [James] That is clearly not rice, Barry. - Sorry, am I missing something? - [James] Is it, Mike?
- Do you know what it is? - Course it's rice. (beep) I hope! (Barry laughs) - So this is rice from Rice Inc. - [Ben] So the thing here is
4 billion people on the planet eat rice, on average, once a day, and yet 30% of all the rice
grown is wasted long before it gets into the supply chain. And that's 26 million tonnes of rice. And that can go an awful long way. - It's a problem I had no idea existed. - Well so technically, they
run a laundromat for rice. They dry it, so that farmers
can take their paddy, their rice, to them. They can lease their machines
and they dry the rice, so that they're able to
the store it or sell it at a later date, so it
doesn't just get wasted straight away. - So the reason it's
wasted is 'cause it spoils? - [Mike] Yeah. - [Ben] In the sun drying process, which is normally like a
seven-day process of allowing the sun to dry the rice before
you can take it to market. - Well, we put together a great dish. Ebbers has put together a great dish. This is jasmine rice. - [Ben] They're also doing
things much closer to home. So even in London,
every bag you buy in the UK, they also donate a bag to a food bank. - If I knew I could buy this
rice and I'm contributing to something that's quite important, then I'd feel quite good about myself. - I know what you're thinking though. How much is it in
comparison to other rice? - Can't help it, you've
ingrained it into us. - in-Grained! - [Barry] James. - I didn't mean it. - You did, you did mean it. You can do better than that.
- As soon as I said it I realised, but I didn't mean it. - That's a two kilo bag. Would you like to guess how much that is? - A fiver? - I'd expect to pay about
four pounds for two kilos. - So three pounds a kilo.
- Three pounds a kilo, yeah. - So that bag there, two kilos,
comes in at eight pounds, which is actually less
than a bag of premium Tilda jasmine rice, which is quite interesting. I was quite surprised by that. - So this is already a
prize-winning company. They've won the Hult
Prize, which was co-hosted by Bill Clinton, the United Nations. It's like the world's most
sustainable food prize. So they're obviously onto a good thing, and if it can scale, then
there is the potential to start to eek at that
26 million tonnes of rice that's wasted, and that will
feed an awful lot of people. - It'll definitely make me
think next time I'm buying rice. - Ready for another? - Please.
- [Mike] Lift the cloche - This one, I will be
interested in your reaction. - It's banana. - Banana ketchup. - It's like banana barbecue sauce. - You've said it, it's a
ketchup. It's banana ketchup. This is for Feitosa Gourmet. It is an excellent way of using up. I nearly said inappropriate
but that's not the word I was looking for. Unusable bananas. - What's an inappropriate banana? - I dunno! The favourite suggestion of
Fabrico's friend who brought me that very jar, patatas bravas. - He's done the patatas. - [Both] And forgotten the bravas. (laughs) - They're really nice. Really, really nice actually. And for someone who doesn't
particularly like bananas, that is a compliment. - I'm impressed! - That's great. Banana ketchup is not a
new thing though, is it? It's like, that is a thing. - This kind of solution is
something that the company is doing to save the ones
that never make it to market, because they're crooked, or
the wrong shape, or over-ripe, or under-ripe, or a bit squished. And then also, there are
bananas wasted in the UK. How many do you reckon we waste in the UK? Every day. - 26? - 26 bananas a day?
- Thousand. 26,000. - I dunno, two million a day. Wait, 100,000- 75,000, 50,000, 75,000. - Stop back-tracking! Be confident.
- 75,000. - 1.4 million bananas are
thrown away each and every day in the UK.
- I said two million! - That doesn't count - Is that not disgusting? - I said, I said 2 million. - That is insane, isn't it? So clearly, not just in the UK. Brazil, globally, this
is an issue and a problem that requires solving. Would you buy it over other ketchups? Can you see it having
a place in your pantry? - Yeah, it's something new. It's delicious. I wouldn't use it all the time, but it's a great option to have. - I agree. I'd buy it in addition to ketchup. Tomato ketchup. - How much do you think
a jar of this sells for? - £4.50. - Fiver. - [Mike] Would you both be willing to pay both of those prices? - [Mike] Not combined, individually. - Yes. Would you, however, be willing
to pay £2.68 for that jar? - [James] Yes. - Current exchange rate. (laughs) - [Mike] Well, that sounds
like an overwhelming all-round success. - On par price with a
regular tomato ketchup, but saving bananas.
- From a man who doesn't- - It's good. - I don't buy bananas. I don't like bananas, but I do quite like that ketchup. - Well, we've only got
another one for you. - If you sniff it, lick it, nibble it, you might get closer
to knowing what it is. - (whispers) They're not gonna get this. - Quite bitter, isn't it? - Certainly a little bit apple-y. - Apple? What is it?
- I don't know. - It's really sweet. Is it like butternut squash or something? - Hang of shame of James' head there. - [Mike] He didn't like that guess. - What is it? - They do a number of flavours. Mango, pineapple, but this one, is Mr. Jackfruit. - So James, you're not a fan? - It's quite more-ish, and it tastes a bit, a bit apple-y, a bit
pear-y, and a bit custard-y. - It's almost vanilla-ry. - [James] Yeah. - Phew, I went out on a limb there! (laughs) - You heard custard and
just your mind just played word association. - Yeah, I expected him to just go:-
"No, you mug." - So Jali Fruit is 100%
handcrafted by rural women farmers all over the world. No added sugar, no
preservatives, just bold flavour packed with the vitamins and sun dried. The bit I find fascinating, is
the average local daily wage in most of these cooperatives
is two dollars a day, but Jali Fruit are paying $15 a day. And if you've got a phone
on you, there's a QR code on the front, and the great
thing is, every single bag can be traced back to the
community in which it came from. - [Mike] That is cool, isn't it? - [Ben] 100% transparency
around the provenance and the communities it's helping. - [Barry] That's really cool. - So each of the products
that you're reviewing today are finalists in a
competition for the event that Ebbers spoke at. So these have been
through rounds of testing, judging, research and due
diligence, so that we know what they're claiming is
actually robust and true. So that's why this is
really exciting to me. I think this sounds amazing. - You've also got mango-rama
and party pineapple. - Ooh, J, what's your fun
fact on the back of your packet? - Mango trees reproduce by themselves. It takes two to tango, one to mango. (laughs) - [Ben] Sounds like my life! (laughs) If you buy four packs, that's
two pounds in weight of fruit that's saved, that would
otherwise have been wasted, and one woman's livelihood transformed. How much for four packs of fruit? - £12 for four. - £15. £15. - 16.50. So it's $21. - [Mike] So just over four pounds per bag. Would you buy that? - We already buy quite
a lot of dried mango. Love a dried fruit, and I think
they're similar sort of bags for about the half
price, but I have no idea how they're sourced. - I can imagine that
prices out 90% of people, - It's almost irrespective
of whether you like the product or not. The company itself are
doing something amazing that let's just hope catches on. - Yeah, it's way bigger than that. It's the whole... food
should not be this cheap. - But we're conditioned into
saying that's too expensive for us, as we just have. - You're kind of right. The food system's a bit broken
and companies like Jali Fruit are breaking that. - Let's finish with a
potential game changer. - Oh really? - [Mike] And we've had some game changers. - Stop it, that's not
how you life a cloche. - I did. I think I know what this is. It's sweetener. It's really nice. Quite cooling as well. - Cooling and metallic. It's like putting a cold
marble in your mouth. - You're right! Is that nice? - No. (Barry laughs) But I can imagine you're not
supposed to eat it like this. - So this is xylitol. So it is an alcohol and
therefore, like menthol, chemically has that cooling, but this particular
stuff is made by Xilinat, a Mexican company, who are doing some
pretty incredible things. The founder of Xilinat
came up with this concept, because in later years, his dad
was diagnosed with diabetes, but refused to change his eating habits. His sister was training to
be a dentist and was seeing the phenomenal problems
with kids' tooth decay and cavity problems, and
that's two things in his family inspired him to find a better
way of creating xylitol, which at the time was very expensive and not particularly sustainable. - How do you make xylitol? - It's often made from birch trees, but often other vegetable matter. However, there's a lot of toxic by-waste. So it's very expensive and it's not great. What Xilinat found is a much
better way of producing it, and rather than using vegetable
matter that needs growing in the first place,
using agricultural waste. This one caught my interest
most, 'cause I just wanted to see how it does behave,
so I've created some food. Cinnamon sugar churros, cajeta, cake, homemade jam, and horchata, all using Xilinat. So these are all Sorted
recipes and each case, I've just subbed out
the same weight of sugar for the same weight of Xilinat - That's where, for me, it's
interesting if it is a direct one-to-one replacement for sugar, but is lower in calories
and lower in carbohydrates, because of our humongous
obesity problem globally. Does that cake taste like cake? - A sweet cake It's got a slightly
different texture to it, but I can't work out of
that's the sugar or not. - What kind of cake is it? - Vicky sponge. - [Barry] Oh right, okay. - I don't know if that's working. Have you tried it? - Yeah, it behaved a little
bit different in the bake. It didn't cream with
the butter the same way. However, once the batter was
finally finished with the eggs and the flour and everything
else, it was cake batter. But it's baked differently. - It has a closer texture and
it's more like a Madeira cake. - [James] Yeah, it's pasty. - What do you think of the jam? Because I said I did one for one. I actually used half
the amount in the jam. - Jam's good.
- And it's jammy? The consistency is there, it's sweet with a little bit of tartness. So not only is it 40% less
calories, 75% less carbohydrate, but it's also half the amount. - [Mike] How about the churros? So talk to us about how it behaved. - Well, this is just a tossing process. So I just took out the fryer
and tossed it in the sugar. I think again, 'cause
they are larger granules, it hasn't clung to- - [Mike] That's my question, yeah. - The churros quite the same. In the cajeta, the great
colour and the great flavour from the sauce, but again,
it's not thicken the way that caramel does, but
xylitol does not caramelise. It's not very good in
recipes that you need sugar in liquid form. - Because it's coated on the outside, I'm getting that cooling sensation as well as the sweetness,
and that's quite nice. It's something, again, it's
embracing how different it is. - I was gonna say it's not very nice. For me, it doesn't work. It's weird, it tastes
weird, it tastes wet. As soon as you dissolve it in a liquid, jam and milk, it's great. - What are your overall thoughts? Like how you responding to it? Do you think it does enough of a job? - I never use sugar. - I'm so sorry, I'm the same. I never have sugar in my house. And if I do, it's a
really small little bit and I'll use it for bread and you know, the odd chocolate fondant
if I'm feeling fancy. (laughs) - That is so chef-y! - No, its not, it takes 15 minutes! - No 'normal' just rustles
up a chocolate fondant. - I'm not even lying, that happens. - So how much for that bag?
- That bag. - Four or five quid? - Eight pounds. - 200 pesos, which equates
to just over eight pounds. Barry Taylor, great guessing! - So a lot more expensive than sugar, but that is partly because
of its new innovation, and the way they're doing
it, and the small scale they're working at. - If they can make it cost effective for health-food cafes, and
brands, and people like that, I can imagine it'll be crazy successful. - Okay, so of the four,
which do you think is likely to make the most difference
in the next few years? - I think Rice Inc., because I feel like they have the best chance
of making a difference in the place that they've
chosen to make a difference. - So like, food waste
seems to sit at the heart of a lot of these problems. The Jali Fruit, the rice, and
the banana ketchup as well. But I'll just go to the one
that I understand the best and I can, adapting into my
life will be really easy. The banana ketchup one
for me was a stand-out. - That's probably the most
poignant thing you've said. We all eat three times a day. How often do we actually think about it? - Over to you guys. Which of those products
are your favourite? Who gets your vote? And if you like seeing us
discuss these food trends, then give the video a like
and we'll make some more. - And we'll make sure
that the details of all the four products and companies
that we've talked about today are in the link down below, along with links to the
event where you can see the six other finalists, 10 in total. The Thought for Food finale is
happening on World Food Day. That's October the 16th. Go and check out because
there's gonna be a winner. (men laughs) No one knows who it is yet. - Yes there is, Ben! - That's the cliffhanger I lent it on. - [Mike] Before you go, just
a quick shout to say thanks to all of you who are using
and sending us your thoughts on our Packs app. We wanted to create a
tool to help you boss your mid-week meals,
cut down on food waste, and reduce the cost of
your weekly food shop, and you are helping us do just that. So thank you. We wanna make this as accessible
as possible right now, so if you haven't tried it,
you can now for a full month absolutely free. The link is in the description box below. And now for the bloop. - I don't know what rice
looks like before it dried. I've just realised. - If you look down that lens and say, "Oh, it looks like this," then I'm sure we'll be able
to find a picture for you. - I don't do that. Jamie does that.
- D'you wanna know or not? - He's round there. We
could get Jamie in to blink. - D'you wanna know or not? - I'll look it up later. (men laughs)
"I don't DO that." OKAY, MR. PRISSYPANTS (Just kidding, I adore him)
James is always adorable... 😍💗💗💗